Thursday, 28 October 2010

No one asked me where I wanted to be born said the store window mannequin, but if they had,I'd have preferred almost anywhere to this festivalof false delights, where the distance between wishesand dreams is equal to the distance betweenpromises and lies. That is, it doesn't exist. The deer do not come down to the water to uttertheir spontaneous cries. There's nothing here but concrete.The deer are legitimately terrified. I tooam terrified. Morning in the canyon, then again nightin the canyon. The gap grows ever more widethe way the light fallson a diagonal, the night in its radial aspectdefying meditation. A moon rose in the mind and each thing there picked up its radial aspect in the night. Sometime in another otherwise completely ordinary random century.

17 comments:

Responding so quickly to something so fine seems a little indecent, but I'm reminded of that Henry Green description of prose -- that "it is not quick as poetry" -- and then I feel a little better about saying something so quickly about your poem and Carol Highsmith's pictures. For me, this is the finest thing I've seen on BTP, and that is saying a lot. Everything connects energetically, logically and beautifully and clarifies perceptions I think I've had, conclusions I think I've reached and certain goals I think I feel certain about. Labels do tend to be invidious and I've never been able to warm up to "post-modern". For me "modern", which I grew up with, and which includes knowledge and appreciation of everything that came before, still works and is amazing when someone expresses something new and original. This is modern and amazing and the words and praise could go on and on.

Yes, well said, Curtis Roberts. I don't know much about the subdivided -isms of poetry, but I'm surprised if modernism expresses distaste for concrete; however, I like the remark by Auden "when civilization is becoming monotonously the same all the world over...in poetry, at least, there cannot be an "International Style".

Thank you very much Curtis and Arthur, it is the kindness of generous (need I also say brilliant) souls like yours that encourages one on in one's continuing ... what's the word? follies? evasions? innocent pastimes? attempts at entertainment?

Now that modernism has surrendered its boldness and flamboyance along with its entitlement as an official avant-garde -- having been superceded in the wearying course of academic-consumer recyclings by the serial later -isms, toward none of which, of course, is it possible or permitted to feel warmth -- and so lost all the caché of danger and daring that once went hand-in-hand with the infamous willful obscurity, the closed coteries, etc. -- and thus in time become reduced to that wee timorous cowering thing, a bit of the trivium of history -- one feels toward it a curious and indeed growing fondness.

Not quite the same thing as nostalgia, though then again, for me, old stuffed playthings have never quite lost their charm, if only in memoriam. Anything for a scrap of false security.

(By the way, Curtis, credit where due, I must acknowledge that the usage of the word "random" in this poem in part reflects the influence of your daughter Jane and her peer group...)

Apologies for the Blogger hurdles and gauntlets, I hate to make this blog into a miniature version of the Spanish Inquisition, but there was such in intolerable volume of spam and such, finally I had to give in to the word verification machine.

Each bit of Norwegian I pick up from you is proving more useful than the one before. (In my imaginary conversations with imaginary Norwegian friends, that is.)

Have I ever told you, by the way, that I am actually a far better-selling author in Norwegian than in English (not that it would take much, but still)?

canyonesque, yes, I was just looking at images of deerfording a stream (so it seems) on a wall atLascaux. and then, like an hour later, comingover your awesome words, coupled, I might add,with a reading od Pound's "Portrait d'une Femme" in between all of this, sped by four espressos on m hopme machiner and one at a local cafe. Bless your evermagnificent voice, your gift, your song, etc. so utterly engaged with the world, the deer, etc. tis poem really brings tears to my eyes..

Tom Clark has written somewhere on his heart: «My heart, then, though small, was full» and about this simple but beautiful verse Terje Thorsen his translator says that it also represents Tom Clark's poetic (?): a deep empathy and humanistic sensibility towards poetry. The small heart that is full. The big man who takes up so little room. Is that better? In Singles Book The Old Slow Story of the West you get just over a dozen of the American poet's best poems that he himself believes have been among the most durable of them all.

Oh, and by the by, looking back over these comments I'm reminded we began with Curtis's mention of Carol Highsmith's wonderful photography. Those who have been following these last several posts will certainly echo Curtis's statement of admiration. It's my sense that Carol's tremendous work in surveying America, all of it donated to the Library of Congress, may well comprise that "missing link" we have long hoped to find, connecting-up the image of this nation which is the heritage of the great Farm Security Administration photographers -- Lange, Lee, Vachon, Delano, Wolcott, Rothstein et al. -- with these images of the America in which we find ourselves now.

A remarkable achievement.

I think perhaps many people may have missed Carol's gracious comments here.

I'm guessing she deliberately commented on a post that does not contain her pictures. I would take that sort of modesty as consistent with her whole remarkable endeavour.